Superficially, I'm all about the speedy, steady updates from Apple. Now that they don't have to ship a box of software/OS, they can be much more regular and cheaper, and that's great...

BUT

not to re-open the whole issue of creative professionals feeling a bit stranded, but it usually takes a good 6 - 8 months for an operating system to get its bugs ironed out and become stable. It usually takes developers that long to update their apps or plug-ins to work with said OS. I use Final Cut (7 and X... will 7 no longer work in Mountain Lion??). I use Logic as my primary recording software, but what about all my instrument plug-ins and effects? Some of them haven't even been modified to work for Lion yet (I still run Snow Leopard), so I was waiting a bit longer. And now, a new OS in a few months.

So, with this constant cycle of a whole new OS every year, will there ever be a "stable" operating system which has been given a chance to mature before a new one washes it away, and how the hell will developers be able to keep their plugins, etc updated on such a continuous cycle (considering the past)? I hope it's not as doomy as I think it is.

I'm guessing the OS infrastructure will remain the same. The updates will probably be "on-top" of what the OS is already doing. I can't imagine Apple being that stupid to start fresh every year.

That's the big question. Apple historically orphans old Macs when a new release comes out. Lion demanded Core 2 Duo support which begins in 2007 for iMacs and Macbooks and were shipped in Mac Minis as late as the first half of last year. So that cannot be criteria if Apple wants to drop support for older machines.

Lion dropped support for the original Core Duo because those weren't really 64-bit. Core 2 Duo is, and will continue to be supported for quite a while.

I do think that Gatekeeper is a good security architecture update. Though I hope Apple makes it easy enough to allow non app store apps to be installed where average users can do it. If you have to do some complex ctrl-option-apple clicking to open downloaded apps or a hard to find setting option, it's going to put the hurt on people trying to distribute apps outside of the store.

putting he hurt on non MAS developers is the whole point... under the guise of security. I'm a bit upset with it at the moment because its going to play major havoc with people making Wineskin apps. I can register and get Wineskin Winery and Wineskin.app config an ok, but none of the apps people make with it will be, and will be super annoying to people trying to port programs for personal use, or share wrappers with other people.

Lion dropped support for the original Core Duo because those weren't really 64-bit. Core 2 Duo is, and will continue to be supported for quite a while.

Wrong

As we suggested might happen in our Lion review, Mountain Lion's developer preview appears to do away with support for any Mac that cannot boot into OS X's 64-bit kernel. I'll link you to that page of our Lion review again if you'd like deep technical information about what that means, but the short version is that a wide range of Apple's products from 2007 and 2008 are being dropped regardless of whether they include a Core 2 Duo processor. The list of supported Macs includes:

The cutoff happens in different places for different products, but here are some rules of thumb: if your Mac uses the ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card or the Intel GMA 950/X3100 integrated graphics chips, you're out of luck. If you're got a white iMac or one of the very first Mac Pros, you're out of luck.

This is probably obvious to many of you who are developers, but I didn't understand it until I started developing for iOS last year: many of the most important "features" in a new version of an OS invisible to end-users, they are new APIs and capabilities given to developers. This is more obvious on the iOS side (since it's a younger, more evolving OS) but it still applies to OS X. I don't know how many times I've installed a new OS and been underwhelmed. The only things you see are the new apps and new eye candy. You don't see the capabilities that the OS gives to developers to make better apps.

For example, this iCloud stuff. When you upgrade to Mountain Lion on day one, you you'll notice a few things--the stuff the Apple apps implement, but the real impact will be when third parties roll out the apps that incorporate this.

As I said, this is no-brainer stuff to many of you, but it's not necessarily obvious if you don't develop applications.

I am particularly interested in the intersection of iCloud and the Pro apps -- especially FCP X.

Scenario: At an event in the field:

1) capture with iPhone or camera

2) ingest into iPad for first edit/rough cut

3) simultaneously send source media to iCloud

4) publish rough cut to...

5) simultaneously edit pro cut on Mac from source on iCloud

6) publish pro cut to...

Sounds to me like you'd want integration with iMovie then. No format with a data rate low enough to be able to beam that fast would be anything close to a pro format. Besides they've already got iMovie for iOS

putting he hurt on non MAS developers is the whole point... under the guise of security. I'm a bit upset with it at the moment because its going to play major havoc with people making Wineskin apps. I can register and get Wineskin Winery and Wineskin.app config an ok, but none of the apps people make with it will be, and will be super annoying to people trying to port programs for personal use, or share wrappers with other people.

I think Gatekeeper is a feature to developers who go through the approval process of the Mac App Store. It gives consumers an outlet that is even more reliable option (ie. shopping at the Apple Store vs. Craigslist). The option to make apps and distribute them out of the App Store is still available, but it's looking a lot less desirable now...